


Angel's Wings, Flowers, and Stars

by unkissed



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Astoria what Astoria, Coming of Age, Gen, Leaving Home, POV First Person, POV Second Person, Scorpius has two dads, Tattoos, Uncle Theo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-16
Updated: 2015-06-16
Packaged: 2018-04-04 15:26:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4142883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unkissed/pseuds/unkissed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scorpius is half a person when Albus leaves to pursue his dreams of rockstardom.  Uncle Theo recognizes this turmoil and some very real bruises when Scorpius comes home for Christmas.  Theodore gives some fatherly advice and a gift that keeps on giving, because Merlin knows Draco is ill equipped to handle these issues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Angel's Wings, Flowers, and Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Colorfulstabwound, Bex, and Shan for friendship and inspiration. Rosa belongs to Bex, and it is Shan's rendition of Pansy I always draw upon when I pair her with Theo.
> 
> This was written as fluff therapy after reading Colorfulstabwound's "King and Lionheart", which is an AMAZING story. This story has nothing to do with that story, other than it being in a very similar parallel universe.

You are the very end of your long and reportedly noble (though that is highly debatable) bloodline.  The blood that runs through your veins is as pure as it gets in the wizarding world nowadays.  Judging from the way attitudes towards blood purity have changed in the last two decades, it is likely the purest blood that will ever exist from here on out. You are not particularly proud of your pureblood lineage, but you’re not ashamed of it either. Things like names and ancestors have ceased to matter to you because you know what a _real_ family is made of, and it isn’t necessarily common flesh and blood.

 

The closest thing to your own flesh and blood is the person that you’ve been sharing your life with for… well, you’d rather not count the years.  You and Draco have been one soul in two oft-entwined bodies for a very long time now. You share everything except his name. (Though if you trace your family tree back many generations, you do share a common ancestor.)

 

When Draco fathered a son, the boy was as much yours as he was his parents’.  It didn’t matter that you were not really Scorpius’ uncle.  Your connection to this child went beyond that of godfather. From the first time you held him in your arms when he was a day old, your obligation to him ceased to be merely a promise you had made to his father (and secretly to his mother prior to his birth). Scorpius would be yours right then and there – not in the event his mother and father ceased to be able to care for him. He was your _little guy_ from the time he was an impossibly small infant to the time he was an impossibly tall teenager.

 

And that is who stands before you now – your baby boy, towering over you by at least 5 inches.  He’s eighteen now, in his last year of Hogwarts, but it still feels like he’s little enough for you to heft him on your shoulders and carry him around.  For all your efforts, combined with those of his biological parents and his grandmother, you have managed to keep Scorpius safe all these years.  But you had inadvertently kept him in a bubble, and so his emotional maturity doesn’t quite match that of his physical maturity.

 

You’ve known this for a while. It was perfectly fine for the time being.  From the periphery, you watched as Scorpius’ precocious friends got into trouble and got hurt – better them, than your sweet little boy.  But now the reality of Scorpius’ life is hitting him hard, forcing him to grow up quickly to catch up with his circumstances.

 

There has been a war going on inside you, between your head and your heart – an age-old rivalry.  This particular battle is over Scorpius’ own heart. Should you wait in the wings and watch him get hurt so that he can learn these important life lessons on his own (really, the only way one can really learn)?  Or should you swoop in now and prevent him from injury?

 

From the broken expression on Scorpius’ face and the uncharacteristic slouch of his shoulders, you know that the damage is already done.  Perhaps it is irreparable. You can’t help but feel guilty about that, even though there was likely nothing you could have done about it.

 

~//~

 

He’s sitting at the table in the grand dining room of Malfoy Manor on Christmas Eve, staring absently at the uneaten food on the fine china.

 

“What’s the matter, darling?  Don’t you like veal?” Narcissa asks from her gilded wheelchair at the head of the table, “I can have the cook prepare something else for you.”

 

“Don’t tell me you’ve gone bloody vegetarian like your Uncle Theo,” Draco sniffs curtly.

 

“Not hungry,” Scorpius replies.

 

Narcissa, Draco, and I exchange concerned looks while Scorpius continues his staring contest with the breaded veal cutlet. Narcissa furrows her brow slightly and sighs almost inaudibly, expressing her helplessness.  Draco shrugs his shoulders dismissively, as if to wipe his hands of the situation he’s ill-equipped to handle anyway.  Which leaves me to roll my eyes and heave a resigned sigh. Once again, Uncle Theo is left to deal with the awkwardness of adolescence.

 

To be honest, after the way I handled The Talk with Scorpius in his father’s stead, it is a wonder that Draco still lets me field these sensitive issues.  He still hasn’t forgiven me for giving a fifteen-year-old a box of condoms and packets of lube.

 

Like then, I know that Scorpius is going to do what Scorpius wants to do, regardless of what his family says or does to persuade him otherwise.  I’m of the mind that one should steer their kids in the right direction rather than trying to completely blockade their route.  It’s better then letting them run off a cliff.

 

I clear my throat to break the tense silence at the dinner table.  “So, Scorpius… I know you’ve probably been too busy to get your ol’ Uncle Theo a Christmas present. So why don’t we go out after dinner and pick something out for me?”

 

“Tonight?” Draco questions me, “Where in Merlin’s name are you going shopping at this hour of the--,” but Narcissa gently puts a hand on his upon the table, effectively shutting him up.

 

“Splendid idea,” she says, “Most shops in muggle London have extended hours tonight.  In fact, I’m almost positive that Harrods is open until midnight.”

 

Scorpius doesn’t even look up when he answers a half-hearted, “M-kay.”

 

 

After pudding, Scorpius and I pop into Southend London – my old haunt, near what used to be my bachelor’s loft. Nothing is open, save for the particular shop that I have in mind.  But I take my time walking there with him, choosing a quiet, roundabout route along the Thames.

 

“To say you miss him would be an understatement, hm?” I speak around my cigarette.

 

Scorpius stops our slow stroll and leans back on the railings along the riverbank with a deep sigh.  “I miss Al more than I feel I have the right to.”

 

I rest my arms on the rail and let my cigarette dangle over the dark water.  “I know what you mean.  When your dad and I were much younger, probably a little bit older than you, I would miss him like mad. But it killed me because I had absolutely no right to miss what wasn’t mine to begin with.”

 

Scorpius steals my cigarette and I just have to laugh at how similar this scene is to those that had played out so many years before with a different Malfoy.  He giggles and I let him keep the cigarette.  He takes a tiny experimental inhale, not even letting the smoke enter his lungs before blowing it out.  It looks all wrong on him, whereas it had always looked right on Draco.

 

“Does it ever get easier?” he asks, coughing a little.

 

I gaze wistfully upon the glittering lights reflected in the river for a few silent moments of thought.  I shake my head.  “No. It doesn’t.”  I turn to him and I look at him – really look at him, because there are things I want to say that even I can’t face.  “It can consume you if you let it.”

 

The bruises on his wrists and the side of his neck hadn’t gone unnoticed when Scorpius came home for Christmas break. They are the sort of bruises that can’t be self-inflicted.  The sort of black-and-blue marks of ownership that had once marred my skin when I was young and thought that I needed pain to make Draco’s love real. Scorpius is still my little boy and I can’t even stomach the thought of what it took for him to wear those bruises – what depths of despair he had to sink to.

 

Scorpius lets out a shuddering exhale of smoke before returning the cigarette to its rightful owner.  “Well, that’s comforting,” he says sarcastically.

 

“You asked,” I shrug.

 

We exchange mirthless laughter because we both know that sarcasm is the language of love in this family.

 

“How do I make it stop?” he asks, very quietly, long after the laughter has faded.  “How can I stop it from consuming me?”

 

“Follow him,” I reply, as if it’s so simple. He looks at me incredulously. I blow out a plume of smoke above our heads and shrug.  “Well, he never said you couldn’t.  Right?”

 

“But…” Scorpius’ argument dies on his tongue because he knows that putting forth all the reasons why he shouldn’t follow Albus would only make him lose his resolve to actually do it – and I can tell that he’s desperate enough to do it.  The light returns to his eyes and I know his mind is made up. I’m terrified of losing him to the big wide world, but it’s time.  It’s been time for a while.

 

“I won’t tell your dad right away. I’ll give you a few days head start,” I reassure him.

 

He puts his head on my shoulder and nuzzles his face into the leather of my jacket, just like he’s always been doing since the days when I had to carry him to even reach my shoulder.  Now he has to bend down to do it.  “You’re the best.”

 

“I know,” I say with feigned smugness. “And I deserve the best Christmas present ever from you.”

 

“I wouldn’t even know what to give you at this point,” he says.

 

“I want a part of you that I can have with me always. Even when you’re off gallivanting with your rock star boyfriend.”

 

He picks his head off my shoulder and looks at me sideways.

 

“Trust me.  It won’t hurt,” I say with a slight smirk.

 

 

When I lead him to a tattoo parlor a few blocks up from my old flat, he stops dead in his tracks when he realizes where I’m taking him.  “Won’t hurt, _my arse_!” he says.  “I’m not getting a fucking tattoo.”  He knows that he can only get away with that sort of language with me.

 

“Don’t be ridiculous, Scorpius,” I chide him, “I wouldn’t dare allow Draco Malfoy’s precious son to get a tattoo without daddy’s permission, lest I wanted to be dismembered in a very particular manner. I’m still very functional in my middle age where it counts, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

 

“Gross,” Scorpius snorts.  “Can’t believe you and dad are still at it at your age.”

 

Inside the parlor, I catch up with my old friend Magda while Scorpius takes up a pen and gets to work on a sketch pad.

 

After a few minutes and several crumpled pieces of paper later, Scorpius asks, “Show me your other tattoos.” He quickly amends, “The ones I’ve seen before.  Not the ones in weird places.”

 

I roll my eyes.  “I don’t have any tattoos in weird places that you haven’t seen before.”

 

“That’s not what dad says,” he replies with a wry grin.

 

 

My first tattoo was inflicted (and I do mean _inflicted_ ) in the traditional Javanese method of ink on a bamboo needle – a spiral pattern in the shape of a flower representing the Indonesian rite of passage, on the underside of my left forearm, where a Dark Mark would have been, had I not run away from home at seventeen.

 

My second tattoo was Magda’s work – angel’s wings over my right shoulder, in memory of my mother.  Magda had done my third tattoo shortly after, in memory of my late girlfriend, Rosa – a rose on the underside of my left wrist.

 

The fourth was done at Physical Graffiti, a shop in the East Village of New York – a pansy on the underside of my right wrist, for my girlfriend at the time.  I don’t regret it, because Pansy is still my best friend. 

 

Draco was with me on the North Shore when I had my fifth tattoo inflicted (yes, again deliberately using that word) in the traditional Hawaiian method – a tribal pattern on my right upper thigh, representing the stars above Oahu in the month of my birth. 

 

My sixth was done many years later – the _Draco_ constellation winding around my right upper arm.  Another masterpiece by Magda’s hands. 

 

When I show this tattoo to Scorpius, his eyes become bright and his pen begins to speed across the paper.  I’ve taught him the night sky so well that he doesn’t need to reference anything but his own memories to draw my next tattoo.

 

As I sit in the padded recliner in Magda’s shop, holding Scorpius’ hand, I can’t keep the tears from falling silently. The pain of the needle is nothing compared to the pain of losing my one and only child – the boy I will miss like an appendage when he leaves, even though I have no real claim over him. As the needle punctures the skin of my lower right arm, just bellow the tattoo of the _Draco_ constellation, I take the pain in my stride.  Because this is the pain that I am taking for Scorpius – the pain that I hope his heart never has to feel.

 

When it is all said and done, in the small hours of Christmas Eve, I gaze upon the stars that adorn my arm. These are the stars I wear for the people I love most in the world – my family - the brightest stars in my galaxy –  My Draco, and my Scorpius.

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea why I switched tenses half way through.


End file.
